1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of electronic messaging, and in particular to selecting a message transport for transmitting a message.
2. Description of the Related Art
In so-called “instant messaging”, short messages are exchanged between users of computer systems or devices connected to a common messaging system or server. Although implementation of instant messaging for computer systems with wired connections to instant messaging systems is known, support for instant messaging on wireless mobile communication devices (“mobile devices”) presents several challenges. For example, wireless communication links tend to be much less stable and reliable than wired connections. A mobile device may be moved outside a coverage area of a wireless communication network, in which case a communication link is lost, or between different coverage areas or networks that support different types of links and services, such as both data and voice services or voice services only. Therefore, even though a user of such a device may wish to take advantage of such benefits of instant messaging as a simplified view of messages, known systems support instant messaging only while the mobile device maintains a connection to an instant messaging system. Other types of messaging are similarly dependent upon the availability of a particular message transport or communication scheme.